Irish start-up launches fantasy football app

A new free fantasy football app, developed by a company based at Dublin City University, is launching today, just in time for the start of the new English Premier League season.

Available for Google Android and Apple iOS, Beat Your Manager! is the product of a fledgling business operating out of DCU's Innovation and Enterprise centre, INVENT.

Developed over the past two years by company founder Dr Padraig Doolan, the game claims to be the first fantasy football app to allow fans make live substitutions while the game is in progress.

The game's other main difference is that it allows the player to focus on managing a particular club.

Using an advanced statistical scoring method based on 100 performance metrics, the app gets around the problem of scoring players who don't play in real life, by predicting their most likely score for that game.

The company behind the app, Beat Your Manager Fantasy Games Ltd, was formed in September last year by Dr Doolan, a former research scientist of over 16 years with over 30 peer-reviewed publications in bioinformatics and biostatistics.

The firm is part of the Enterprise Ireland sponsored New Frontiers Entrepreneur Development Programme.